By Matt Flegenheimer @ NYTimes.com, April 17

BENSALEM, Pa. —  [....]

[....] “Just like any other damn president,” sighed Theresa Remington, 44, a home-care worker and the mother of two active-duty Marines, scraping at an unlit cigarette. She had voted for Donald J. Trump because she expected him to improve conditions for veterans and overhaul the health care system. Now?

“Political bluster,” Ms. Remington said, before making another run at the quarter slots. She wondered aloud how Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont might have fared in the job [....]

Yet interviews with voters across the district suggest a nuanced view of a president getting his sea legs. Many still trust him, but wonder why his deal-making instincts do not seem to be translating. They admire his zeal, but are occasionally baffled by his tweets. They insist he will be fine, but suggest gently that maybe Vice President Mike Pence should assume a more expansive role.

Perhaps most forcefully, they question when they will begin to see more of that word they were promised, the outcome that voters were supposed to be “sick and tired of” by now, in Mr. Trump’s campaign estimation.

Winning.

“It’s not what he’s done, it’s what he’s trying to do,” said Bill Yokobosky IV, 33, a train engineer from Langhorne, Pa., who was waiting for a haircut at a strip mall. “He hasn’t succeeded, really.” [....]

By Amy Parnes @ The Hill, April 17

It's their headline story right now, so the editors think it's a real Congressional trend worth noting--

Democrats previously reticent to welcoming Sen. Bernie Sanders into their fold are coming around. 

More than a dozen Democrats interviewed by The Hill say the Vermont Independent has become a powerful and welcome voice for a party struggling to find its identity after a devastating defeat in 2016. 

While misgivings remain about giving too much leadership to a politician who technically isn’t a Democrat, a clear warming trend is on the rise [....]

Donald Trump’s keep-them-guessing foreign policy, explained by the NSC’s Michael Anton.

By Susan B. Glasser for The Global Politico @ Politico.com, April 17

He’s been called “the leading conservative intellectual to make the case for Donald Trump,” his work dubbed “the intellectual source code for Trumpism,” and many other names besides.

During the 2016 campaign, Michael Anton was an anonymous pamphleteer making an inflammatory case for electing Trump, as a way he said, of blowing up a complacent and failing system, where both parties were complicit in a foreign policy that had flopped and a domestic situation so perilous America was “headed over the cliff.” It was, he wrote, “The Flight 93 election,” and the times were so dire that Americans had no choice but to charge the cockpit under Trump’s unconventional banner, even if the plane crashed.

Now unmasked as the author of those polemics, Anton today is head of strategic communications for the National Security Council in Trump’s White House, a provocateur turned policymaker with a front-row seat in the ideological fight underway to define Trump’s presidency [....]

By Jason Horowitz for The Saturday Profile @ NYTimes.com, April 14

[....] With a deep suspicion of Islam, open borders and the European Union, Mr. Lombardi, 66, considers himself a bridge to Mr. Trump for his old friends and ideological allies in Europe, including Marine Le Pen of France, Geert Wilders of the Netherlands, Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary and Beppe Grillo, the co-founder of Italy’s insurgent Five Star Movement — “the Trump of Italy,” as Mr. Lombardi calls him.

“I’m American to the extent I’m here 40 years,” he said in Italian-accented English. “But at the same time I understand Europe a lot and I understand what’s going on.”

What’s going on, he says, is that Mr. Trump has given hope to politicians trying to harness populist forces, often with the social media tools that Mr. Lombardi himself has used in his capacity as the administrator of Bikers for Trump and about 500 other pro-Trump Facebook groups.

But Mr. Lombardi’s apparent prominence shows that something else is going on. The election of Mr. Trump, a master self-promoter, has imbued members of his social circle with the perception of juice that comes with proximity to power.

Mr. Lombardi, a chief executive of plausible-sounding foundations [....]

By Elena Schor @ Politico.com, April 15

Sen. Sherrod Brown’s reelection may hinge on whether he can work with the White House.

By Marcus Baram @ The New Yorker, April 14

Cohn’s longtime switchboard operator (Christine Seymour) listened in on his conversations with many people, including a young Trump.

Mostly interesting trivia like

....One of Seymour’s notes describes Cohn’s efforts to advance the judicial career of Trump’s sister, Maryanne Trump Barry, who served as a federal appeals-court judge for decades....

...Seymour also describes some of Cohn’s political dirty tricks, including that he had researched Geraldine Ferraro, the 1984 Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee, with the assistance of Trump’s adviser Roger Stone....

....According to Seymour’s notes, Cohn’s frequent phone pals included Nancy Reagan and the former C.I.A. director William Casey, who “called Roy almost daily during [Reagan’s] 1st election.” Cohn also enlisted his friend and the owner of the New York Post, Rupert Murdoch, to help bring down Ferraro’s campaign....

....Another note says, “Donald was the last one Roy spoke to on the phone,” perhaps referring to Cohn’s last days, in 1986. Seymour also noted that Trump could be “two-faced,” and described...,

David Frum has serious issues with Rick Perlstein's narrative about the American conservative movement(s), with a lot of links backing up his arguments....

By David Frum @ The Atlantic, April 15

Writers like Rick Perlstein who find in 2016 evidence to validate their darkest views of Republicans miss the ways in which Trump’s rise is a story of discontinuity.

AUSTIN, Texas — A team of engineers led by 94-year-old John Goodenough, professor in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin and co-inventor of the lithium-ion battery, has developed the first all-solid-state battery cells that could lead to safer, faster-charging, longer-lasting rechargeable batteries for handheld mobile devices, electric cars and stationary energy storage. 

The researchers demonstrated that their new battery cells have at least three times as much energy density as today’s lithium-ion batteries.

By Edward Isaac Dover @ Politico.com, April 13

The professor who took hell for predicting President Donald Trump has a much longer case for predicting President Mike Pence — and it’s all in his new book, out next week.

By Ezra Klein @ Vox.com, April 12

A new study finds political polarization is increasing most among those who use the internet least

By Reid Standish & Emily Tamkin @ The Cable @ ForeignPolicy.com, April 11

On Tuesday, Finland, Sweden, the United Kingdom, the United States, Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania signed a memorandum of understanding to establish the European Center of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats, a sign of just how seriously world leaders are taking Moscow’s attempts at destabilizing Europe.

Since the annexation of Crimea and the outbreak of war in eastern Ukraine in 2014, things have gotten tense between Moscow and the West: Russian jets have probed Finnish and Swedish airspace; a barrage of Russian disinformation has targeted Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania; and France, Germany, and the United States have all accused the Kremlin of interfering in their domestic politics. It’s part of Russia’s embrace of so-called “hybrid war,” or the use of politics, diplomacy, the media, and cyberspace to destabilize opponents without necessarily having to resort to tanks and artillery.

The combination of military posturing and disinformation has become the backbone of Moscow’s modern day military doctrine as it tries to reassert itself along its borders and beyond. Violations and provocations near borders are meant to test a neighbor’s resolve, while information attacks are meant to inflame internal problems and sow discord. Other operations, such as Russia’s cybermeddling in the U.S. election, were meant to boost Donald Trump, who as a candidate denigrated NATO, the European Union, and the liberal international order.

The pact signed Tuesday is meant to establish a center to deal with those hybrid threats, which are hardly limited to the signatories. France and Germany in particular are concerned about Russian disinformation influencing upcoming elections.

But for Sweden and Finland, Russia’s attempts at destabilization are souring relations. Neither is currently a member of NATO —  a throwback to both countries’ histories of military neutrality and complex relations with Moscow. But since the end of the Cold War [......]